Proverb Comprehension in Children with Asperger’s Disorder: The Role of Transparency

Abstract

Objectives: In the present study, we investigated whether children with Asperger’s disorder were able to correctly comprehend proverbs and whether their comprehension was affected by the transparency of the meaning of the proverbs. Methods: Twelve children with Asperger’s disorder (AD, age 7;4-9;0) and 12 typically developing children (TD, age 7;4- 9;0) participated in the study. A list of proverbs and four choices of interpretation for each proverb were generated. The proverbs were divided into two types: opaque and transparent. In the opaque proverbs, the figurative meaning of a proverb has nothing to do with the literal meaning of the proverb. In the transparent proverbs, the figurative meaning of a proverb is a metaphoric extension of the literal meaning of the proverb. The children listened to a proverb along with the following choices of interpretation and were asked to choose the most appropriate interpretation. Results: A repeated two-way ANOVA of group (2)×proverb type (2) revealed significant main effects of group and proverb type and a significant interaction between group and proverb type. Specifically, AD children showed significant difficulty compared to TD children in correctly interpreting the meaning of opaque proverbs. However, the two groups did not present any differences in comprehending transparent proverbs. Conclusion: The results indicated that children with Asperger’s disorder had some difficulties in proverb comprehension, particularly with opaque proverbs. It was suggested that the transparency of the meaning should be considered carefully during evaluating or intervening the comprehension skills of figurative language.